Having no leadership, no structure, and no goal (beyond that afforded by the community politics of certain outspoken folks), Anonymous is free to rationalize anything however they like. There is no need for logic or restraint. In an orgy of solidarity, the "with us or against us" mentality reigns supreme. PayPal, MasterCard, government, and anybody else who opposes their attacks are just added to the list of targets.

To each individual, the notion that they could be doing more harm than good is offensive. They've already passed judgement on their enemies, and deemed them evil, and anybody who disagrees must be evil as well. Sure, PayPal, Symantec, and every other company have done some bad things in their history, and should not be lightly forgiven. However, it is important to remember that every individual has also done equally bad things, and should not be the sole judge and executioner of any person, corporation, idea, or organization.

Yes, it seems to be a strange form of group intelligence, this hive. They are evolving into an entity of the desires and fears of the participants. I want to envision a throng of torch and pitchfork bearing peasants on the steps of $cientology , like when it began. Instead I see the usual bullshit that wears a subculture down to a cult of hardcores, while the others move on to the "NEXT BIG THING". In like a lion, out like a lamb. Mark my words.

Can't get too upset about Anonymous. Think about it. Aren't drone strikes just like Anonymous hacks? They are acts of judgement and execution without due process wrought by anonymous people from a far away distance. Oh, and there is always collateral damage and victims can't mount a legal defense. If you want to call acts like that chicken-shit and douchy, then go ahead.

I think you don't understand the rules of engagement. The Military is not a police force and the people they fight with are not civilians in the strict sense. Yes, drone strikes may be sent against non-governmental fighting forces but they are still armies and they are still at war with us and to insinuate that they are not is just wrong.

Um, no. Drone strikes are "just like" Anonymous hacks in the same sense that the Nazi invasion of Poland was just like knocking on your neighbors door to ask to borrow a cup of sugar. You can find things in common between the two, but it would be exceedingly idiotic to equate them as "just like" one another due to the similarities you find.

Sure, PayPal, Symantec, and every other company have done some bad things in their history, and should not be lightly forgiven. However, it is important to remember that every individual has also done equally bad things, and should not be the sole judge and executioner of any person, corporation, idea, or organization.

Really?Really?

What was the last thing YOU did that was "equally bad" as the shitshow that is PayPal?Or maybe you worked for Union Carbide and are responsible for the Bhopal disaster [wikipedia.org]

99% of individuals will never have the opportunity to do anything "equally bad" as a multinational corporation.Your kind of false equivalence is a weak attempt to minimize the negative effects of corporations on the citizenry.

What was the last thing YOU did that was "equally bad" as the shitshow that is PayPal?

For starters, this morning, on my way to work, I took a place in line at an exit ramp, delaying and irritating a few hundred other cars slightly. I do that every morning. Under a very conservative estimate of only one hundred other people irritated daily, I've managed to annoy about 10% of my city (about 36,000 people total) slightly in a year. For comparison, how many people are irritated with PayPal, and how annoyed are they? How many years of traffic disruptions does it take to equal one PayPal?

99% of individuals will never have the opportunity to do anything "equally bad" as a multinational corporation.

For starters, this morning, on my way to work, I took a place in line at an exit ramp, delaying and irritating a few hundred other cars slightly. I do that every morning. Under a very conservative estimate of only one hundred other people irritated daily, I've managed to annoy about 10% of my city (about 36,000 people total) slightly in a year. For comparison, how many people are irritated with PayPal, and how annoyed are they? How many years of traffic disruptions does it take to equal one PayPal?

More false equivalency.I assume you weren't intentionally setting out to irritate a few hundred people per day,but even if you were, as a society we understand that rush hour is annoying and it is something we all deal with.

On the other hand, Paypal doesn't have to be a dick, intentionally or unintentionally.The corporate honchos choose to create and enforce policies that are anti-consumer.

Almost everyone is evil, in some small part. Yes, there are some that commit their trespasses all at once in heinous acts of negligence, apathy, or malevolence, but most "evil" effects come from individuals doing things they don't think are wrong. Small offenses like bringing home pens from work or delaying others' commute add up to a far greater total of distress in the world.

More false equivalence.Taking home a pen from work is not the same as going on a shooting spree.Delaying others' commut

Even just using the word "they" to describe Anonymous implies that it's a specific group when, in fact, it should be treated literally as "anonymous." Perhaps we need to lose the capital "A" at the start of the word; it has incorrect implications that most people are too stupid to see past...

No, really... I have a demonstration all ready to explain how the NT kernel's scheduler is 27% less efficient than the Completely Fair Scheduler (under a particular workload, with particular hardware, during a particular phase of the moon)! This means that Windows users are losing several milliseconds every day because of their scheduler's inadequacy. I've done some research into the amount of multitasking that Windows users do, and I've c

It's not broadcast here but 4 years ago it got media mention because of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation. Have they perhaps hurt the feelings of a particular candidate's supporters this time round?

I think believing that these attacks are targeted that finely, or that there haven't just been a bunch of random people attacking anything that looked vulnerable isn't realistic.

What probably happened is they searched for particular sites running particular combinations of software (it's not all that hard to find out what someone *claims* to be running), or even had just an automated sweep which returns a few likely candidates (my web server is hit all the time by people looking for proxy / malware PHP files that obviously only exist if you're vulnerable / infected already).

I mean, there were Ghanan consulates in that list and all sorts. I think it's more a question of "what was vulnerable" when a particular date for a hacking spree was decided upon rather than any political message (although, sure, one of the hackers might have a motive, or they might look at certain websites first, etc.).

And the age-old argument - Anonymous is not "any one person". It's not even a coherent group. Just about anybody that hacked a site and bothered to tell Anonymous would have been listed there because, by their own admission, they have no idea who their members are / are not and they have no "entry requirement" as such.

It seems much more random to me. If you wanted to make a political statement, you could have gone for US presidential candidates or particular organisations and made the news. But obviously most of those places secure their stuff quite well.

So we end up with PayPal (who are currently denying that anything happened, which I wouldn't be shocked about - there's been a lot of "didn't actually happen" hacks lately where people just post convincing lists of usernames as if they are hacked data), an antivirus vendor and an embassy in some African state.

It's hardly targeted anarchy. It's more like "who left their window open?".

It was NBC in general [examiner.com], not SNL. Also, this may surprise you, but Anonymous is not generally known for having a conservative bias, given their extremely anti-authoritarian core moral values. And four years is an awful long time to remember something like that—did you think they were elephants or something?;)

It's not broadcast here but 4 years ago it got media mention because of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation. Have they perhaps hurt the feelings of a particular candidate's supporters this time round?

You're cute, with your attempts to ascribe rational motivations to an unruly group of monkeys.

Hmm. Interesting and possibly true.OTOH.I would think that most of you techie, anti corp, end justifies the means people are the ones that applaud SNL for that.Could be wrong , but I think the odds are on my side.

I know, I just changed all my passwords because twitter said my account had been compromised, now I have to do it all again! A growing percentage of our waking lives will be consumed creating and changing passwords until that's all that any one does!

The US government (and, in fact, any government, political organisation etc) have the right to be part of Anonymous if they want to. It's the single biggest problem with any "anarchy", if all people are free to do what they want then this must include setting up a governmental system of whichever type they choose, be it dictatorship, democracy, or a dictatorship dressed up as a democracy. In this case the "anarchists" may well be assisting the political aims of their "enemy" who, for all Anonymous know, a

It's just random. They hack (or claim to hack) whatever low hanging fruit they can find (often using other peoples exploits) and then claim that they were targeted attacks. Why else would the supposed targets be so randomly assorted?

It's just random. They hack (or claim to hack) whatever low hanging fruit they can find (often using other peoples exploits) and then claim that they were targeted attacks. Why else would the supposed targets be so randomly assorted?

They are desperate for attention. Their last two hacks turned out to be false. One more and they won't even be relevant anymore.

There have been suggestions that Anonymous has been turned and will attack more or less anybody as long as they're from civilised countries. The lack of leadership means that technically savvy but young/naive hackers don't really question the targets they're given, meaning many of these sort of pointless attacks which prove/demonstrate nothing other than that a lot of badly defended sites exist.

Here's [thehackernews.com] an article I found (by clicking through a few times from TFA). For those who don't want to read:

However according to PayPal’s head of PR, they claim to be investigating the alleged hack, but so far they have stated that they are unable to validate any evidence that there has been a security breach which we can only take to be a good thing.

They also say 28,000 accounts, which means the odds of an individual being hacked are very very low (considering there are over 110 million users). Even still, it's a good idea to change your password, at least.

Kind of makes you wonder at the level of maturity the average Anonymous member has.

Profile: pickly-faced youth, average age about 15.4 years, dwells in mum's basement, no sexual experience to speak of, no political sensibility, pot-smoking and rootbeer-swilling, more computing power at his fingertips than is good for him... or for you and me, that is.